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I had originally posted this in the Friday fun thread but it turns out that it was killing the vibe in there. Not sure what I was thinking. Anyway...
Note: I will completely qualify Portugal Europe and Portland Oregon in this article because they're easy to mix up.
Is liberalism peaking in Oregon?
In 2020, the state of Oregon passed a referendum, ballot Measure 110, which decriminalized all drugs(!) with a vote of 58% in favor.
Voters in Oregon (such as myself) believed this was the path to enlightened drug policy, being informed by the revered Portugal Europe model. Tacked onto the referendum was a bit of social justice theory as well: the police would be required to document in detail the race of anyone they stopped from now on for any reason. To ensure the police weren't disproportionately harassing the 2.3% of the population that's black.
As an occasional drug enjoyer, I do find it a relief to wander the streets of Portland Oregon squirting ketamine up my nostrils like I'm a visionary tech CEO without fear of police. But in broad strokes it appears to be a disaster.
Indeed, the ensuing data was an almost perfect A/B test, the kind you'd run with no shame over which kind of font improved e-commerce site checkout conversions.
By 2023, Oregon's drug overdose rate was well outpacing the rest of the country, so much so that the police officers regularly Narcan with them and revive people splayed out in public parks. Sometimes the same person from week to week. It's true this coincides with the fentanyl epidemic, which could confound the data and have bumped up overdoses everywhere but that wouldn't explain alone why deaths have especially increased in Oregon. The timing fits M110.
https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2024/02/21/fentanyl-overdose-rate-oregon-spikes
At some point someone decided to compare notes with Portugal Europe's system. Some stark differences!
https://gooddrugpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/PortugalvOregon1.pdf
Briefly, Portugal Europe uses a carrot and stick model with a lot of negative incentive, whereas Oregon just kinda writes a $100 ticket and suggests calling a hotline for your raging drug problem maybe.
In the first 15 months after Measure 110 took effect, state auditors found, only 119 people called the state’s 24-hour hotline. That meant the cost of operating the hotline amounted to roughly $7,000 per call. The total number of callers as of early December of last year had only amounted to 943.
The absence of stick appears to not be very effective in encouraging users to seek treatment.
Are the kids having fun at least? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/health/portland-oregon-drugs.html (paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/fHxWk)
That's the brightest part of the article. The rest is pretty depressing and sad and sickening and worrisome.
After a few years of this, the Oregon legislature yesterday finished voting to re-criminalize drugs.
The NYT again https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/us/oregon-drug-decriminalization-rollback-measure-110.html (paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/3zksH)
The governor has indicated that she would sign.
Critics are out in force, arguing that the legislature overrode the will of voters (remember it was passed by referendum) and that the state sabotaged the program by not efficiently distributing treatment resources to addicts. This poster believes the low uptake and missing negative incentives prove that drug harm reduction is not primarily about access to treatment, but about incentive not to use. I do sympathize that better public services and addiction resources that people actually trusted would help, but fentanyl complicates the situation substantially. People need to hit bottom before they seek help (or so goes the popular saying) but fentanyl is so potent and unpredictable that they're dying of an unexpected OD before they find themselves at bottom, ready to seek change.
Frankly, I'm surprised Oregon repealed this so quickly. Has liberalism peaked in Oregon?
As someone who voted for the referendum back in 2020, I'm a little sad that some of the overdose deaths are on my hands. Kind of. Like 1 millionth of the overdose deaths perhaps. It's good to run experiments though, right? This was a pretty good experiment. We at least have an upper bound on how liberal a drug policy we should pursue.
I believe this shows Oregon is not quite as ideologically liberal as previously led to believe. Or, at least, not anymore.
A quick aside: Oregon is a sea of under-populated red surrounding a couple of blue cities, mainly Portland. The Portland metro area has about half the population of the whole state, and therefore Portland mostly controls state-level politics. Where goes Portland, so goes Oregon. So my analysis is mainly focusing on Portland, because that's both where the problem mainly is and where the political will driving all of this originates from.
So: In my opinion, many far-left beliefs are luxury beliefs adopted for their value as status signals. The practical considerations tend to be secondary to the value as a social signal and the costs of these beliefs aren't paid by the people espousing them. People who want to abolish the police aren't typically at risk of being robbed, people who want to subsidize homelessness don't usually live near the homeless, people who want to ban all guns don't usually need to physically protect themselves from violence, people who want to legalize drugs don't interact with drug addicts.
The current state of Portland makes the costs of these luxury beliefs ubiquitous and impossible to ignore. Several events have compounded each other to produce this situation:
Portland has incredibly lax policies around street homelessness that approach subsidization. This started with then-mayor Charlie Hale's "Housing State Of Emergency" in 2015 which forbid sweeping homeless camps and has gotten worse ever since. Homeless camps filled with people literally driven insane by drugs are ubiquitous. Local governments have gone as far as distributing tents (22,000 in two years!) and even foil and straws for smoking fentanyl to the homeless.
Following the nine-month anti-police protest/riot/siege at the Portland Justice Center in 2020, the city has massively de-policed. This is a combination of the police deliberately reducing enforcement as a "silent strike", the cops being massively under-manned, and city policies that prevent police work. We are talking multiple-hour response times for everything except life-threatening violent crimes actively being committed. Someone I know personally caught a guy trying to steal the catalytic converter off of his car then followed the perp in a car chase with 911 on the phone for an hour and a half until he lost him. The cops never showed, they contacted him by phone the next day to take a report.
We legalized drugs completely, as you noted.
These factors have combined to make the drug/homelessness problem so bad at this point that it is seriously negatively affecting everyone in the city. Every person I know who lives in Portland has, in the last couple of years, has been victimized by crime and had multiple negative interactions with the drug addicted homeless. Business are closing and the downtown core of Portland is dying, office workers are refusing to return from work-from-home because of how unsafe it is, and Portland is losing population for the first time in living memory as people flee the dysfunction. The luxury beliefs are finally extracting their costs from the belief-holders, and that's why the tide has turned on this specific issue. However, I don't think you can extrapolate this shift to any greater shift in progressive sentiments. I've had a lot of conversations with people about this: almost universally being a "good progressive" is still very much a core part of the identity of most Portlanders and they are only very begrudgingly ceding ground on drug legalization specifically. They absolutely do not draw any conclusions from this about any of their other beliefs; this threat to their identity is compartmentalized away.
I hadn't thought of it until your comment, but this is another argument in favor of deeply held personal belief in a transcendent value system.
Yes, I'm talking about Christianity. Or, more inclusively any sort of tradition rooted religion.
Back to the main point - I think it's close to common knowledge that everyone develops a sense of identity throughout their life. Failing to do so, in fact, is recognized not only as a major developmental failure, but potentially a mental illness. What you anchor that identity in is incredibly important.
With the fall of religiosity and the rise of secular humanism, I'd say it's a safe assumption to make that people are now anchoring more and more of their identities in politics and culture. These aren't inherently bad things on which to build an identity. The problem is they can and will change. The above post makes this clear. For a long time, being a "good progressive" meant militant support for drug legalization. That happened and it failed. So ... which part of the identity gives? The past-identity that was pro-legalization, or the now-identity that is using evidence to update beliefs? Either way, it's a loss, because you'd have to point to your identity at some point in time and go "I was wrong." This is destabilizing even for the most ... stable person.
How does religion solve this? Religiously informed beliefs are, at their core, transcendental. They are most important in an after-life situation and can neither be confirmed nor disproved in this life in this world. That's a sort of summation of the notion of faith in general. From an identity perspective, this lets believers commit themselves to something they known will never change because it never "was" in the same sense that material things are. I'd be remiss not to tag @TheDag at this point given his post on materialism from earlier today.
The summation here is straightforward; castle made of sand, shifting foundations et cetera. Build "who you are" (whatever that means) on things that are, frankly, eternal. I've seen people who have rooted their identity in seemingly "forever" things have some nasty reality checks; military dudes ("I'll always be a Marine!"), career A-types ("Nobody can take away the fact I was the youngest VP in corporate history!"), and even family ("My sister and I will always be close").
Hot take: the unfalsifiable identity anchor thing is behind the evolution of Wokism to Transism. You can argue with citations about the forces of Whiteness™, but when trans ideology comes down to gender as a metaphysical / spiritual thing which someone experiences, rather than physical sex or physically detectable brain or hormonal abnormalities, it enters the realm of unfalsifiable identity anchor. Previous attempts at having Whiteness or The Patriarchy fill the role of unfalsifiable spiritual force are less personal, and more antagonistic, whereas Transism is about personal identity.
That's not a hot take, that's the entire point of the argument. Unfalsifiable identity anchors are natural for humans, they're not just behind Wokism and Transism, they're behind Chrstianity, Islam, Buddhism, national identities, etc. New Atheists promised that if we get rid of the Unfalsifiable identity anchor of religion, we will usher in a new era of rationality. Christians warned that people will simply replace it with a new one ("god-shaped hole"), and there's a good chance it will be worse than any of the traditional religions. Time seems to have proven them right, and the most depressing thing about the whole ordeal, is that this is hardly the first attempt yielding the same result.
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What?
Assuming you’re correct about needing this particular thing you're labeling “identity”—which I don’t think is quite the right word—that’s still a terrible reason to believe something false.
Embrace any of the existing traditions, and you’re anchoring your “identity” back to material, falsifiable beliefs. Now you can be shaken by schisms and sex scandals!
If those are off the table, you don’t have a “religiously informed belief.” You have some personal experience that you decided to parse as transcendent and meaningful. In short, vibes. There’s no guarantee that those will stay, either. Job 1:21.
From my very secular perspective, it’s far better to pursue a durable, secular philosophy. Something that allows updating your beliefs without too much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Something that lets me adapt to the truth without grasping it too jealously. I think a religious version of this acceptance is possible; I don’t believe you’ll get there by anchoring to a transcendent belief as if it were your football team, or your political allies. You need a healthier relationship with the belief, and with your belief in belief.
That's fine. May I solicit an alternative term or concept definition?
Big issue here. Schsims and sex scandals relate to belief and/or allegiance to an institution (to wit, the Catholic Church). My post argues that's a a bad thing to wed yourself to. Values are where it's at. As much ire as I have for secular humanists, it's quite likely I have more for legalistic Catholic doctrine Nazis who seem to view the Catholic faith as SCOTUS arguments on steroids.
I agree with this passage on its own, but I get a little lost in how it threads into your overall argument. I am sorry for not catching your point.
What is the rubric for durable?
Is it possible to fully known "truth"? I'd say both religious tradition and secular philosophy (Popper comes to mind here) would argue it is not, though we may approach it.
I agree with this. If you turn a transcendental belief into something materialist, worldly, and immediate, you've ruined its value. The Christian proverb here is "Be in, not of, the world"
Prayer traditions are largely based on constant re-examination of belief-in-belief.
This makes me quite happy.
Alright, I've been chewing on this for a bit. I appreciated your response, and I'm still not confident that I've done it justice.
The reason I wouldn't choose "identity" is because I believe there are two phenomena at work. Identity as prediction and shorthand for social-interactions: call it "role." Identity as a set of value judgments: call it "touchstone."
Roles support if-then reasoning. If I go to this party, then I'll be associated with the cool kids. If I mention these talking points, then my tribe will know I've got their back. If I experience a certain emotion in church, then it's something understood by my tradition, and I can feel comfortable sharing it with my fellow Christians.
You can't apply the same reasoning to touchstones, because they're operating at a different level. I value associating with the cool kids. I value my political tribal alignment. I value my fellow Christians.
I think your points about developmental failure and mental illness make sense for roles, but not touchstones. A person who fails to model others' reactions has a serious disadvantage. One who picked unwise touchstones? Not so much.
Picking transcendental beliefs is only addressing touchstones. The question, then, is whether stability comes from the touchstone or from the role. If the latter, then holding an unfalsifiable belief--an immutable touchstone--would still leave one exposed.
When I talked about "durable" philosophy, I was thinking about the ability to adapt to new evidence. Whether this is accomplished through serenity or courage, it demands a certain resilience. I don't think this comes from the touchstones, but from how one reasons about them. Consider the Homeric heroes, oath-bound to besiege Troy. The cosmological beliefs are set dressing. Their particular honor culture was one of countless that followed the rule: if one swears an oath, then one must keep it. I'd call that a role.
This is awesome. Very well said.
I think the only addition I might offer is to ask the following; is there a risk in confusing or, maybe a better word, misplacing a touchstone value for a role based value?
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Why does this very nothing to do with religion post deeply remind you of Christianity? Because there are policy mistakes/changes happening being linked to causes/luxury virtue signaling beliefs? These beliefs being disprovable unlike the bedrock trueness of one of 10,000 religions? That is a pretty weak segue into a sermon.
Regarding people being upset when their reality changes vs religious people. As you say, hard to have a reality check if you don't accept reality.
What about when religious people become atheist or leave their religion. Have you see what that can do to families and people? Especially in those many many religions that treat an apostate like garbage.
Is that not a greater risk as rather than updating a small part or even a large part of your political or scientific world view? Your whole unchangeable/unchallengeable forever belief system has crumbled to dust instead. Often taking with it your family and friends.
Never asserted this. In fact, a major thrust of my original comment was that religious belief is neither provable in a positivist sense nor falsifiable. Faith itself is an ongoing and continuous act.
Bad things are bad, I agree. But my comment wasn't looking at people-within-social-circles, it was looking at the self and identity (the self-concept of self).
Forgive me for nitpicking. A belief system is one thing, the anchor to an identity is another. I agree with you that a belief system ought to be informed by rigorous epistemic evaluation. I think identity is a separate concern that cannot be totally built on a simple amalgamation of "facts." It put it up there with abstract concepts like "justice" - these are not definable in a mathematic proof sense.
Couldn't agree more.
The fact that abstract concepts exist doesn't mean we should believe in actual magic. Also something being abstract doesn't make it worthy as an identity touchstone. Lateness is an abstract concept, it doesn't follow that we should anchor our identity on being punctual.
Fine say you're not shunned when you lose your faith, your world has still be turned upside down and now your concept of self is shattered if that is what built your identity on. Unprovable and unfalsifiable is the same as not existing at all, and should be treated with the same weight.
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Thanks for the tag! For what it's worth, I wrote about my conversion experience below, and this was another factor that helped me along the way. I have had many various ideologies I've tried to pin my identity to throughout the years, from communism to anarchy to libertarianism to effective altruism. Ultimately I've found that Christianity has been far more 'stable' for me, in part because it's transcendental, and in part because there is plenty of room for doubt and even periods of lack of belief while still being welcomed back such as with the parable of the prodigal son.
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